


Ashara's Ascension

by brightephemera



Series: Knights of the Waking Alliance Chronicles [4]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Gen, Master & Padawan Relationship(s), Sith, Sith Dark Council, Sith Empire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 19:50:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13395021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightephemera/pseuds/brightephemera
Summary: Darth Nox is dead. His apprentice stands to inherit.





	Ashara's Ascension

**Author's Note:**

> Set after KotWA chapter 86: http://www.swtorshenanigans.net/wordpresst/download/knights-of-the-waking-alliance-pdf/ , in which Ruth Niral finds out Darth Nox threatened her son...and kills the heck out of Nox for it.

Ashara kept her mask on when she asked the Imperial Guard the way to the bathrooms. She had her hands on her lightsabers as if to assert she wasn’t just a lost student. They directed her.

She discarded the mask while she checked her face and clothing. She wore a fine burgundy robe under a long black tunic made of overlapping leatheris panels. Her sabers weighed at her hips. One was recent, had been the blade she had trained with on Taris someone else’s lifetime ago. It was silver with a blue crystal. It was for innocence. The other was ancient, had been taken from her master Virinos Geth’s corpse after the Outlander Ruth Niral killed him and left him in his scorched blood. It was black with a red crystal. It was for knowledge.

Now, so many years past the child who would be a Jedi, she was here to make her career as a Sith. The Sith who would gut the Empire’s corrupt structure and restore balance to the paths of power.

The guardsmen who had hesitated for her mask bowed for her face. The great doors swung open. Ashara Zavros walked into the chambers of the Dark Council on Korriban.

There were twelve chairs arrayed around the echoing center. Four held sour-looking strangers, new compared with even a month ago. Four had hologram figures, including Darth Scythia. Three seated the old guard.

This left one.

Ashara walked to between the first two chairs and stopped. Darth Vowrawn gestured languidly. “We are called to order. Scythia, my dear, are you ever coming back in person?”

“Get into a contract dispute with the Outlander yourself and ask me that again,” she said acidly. “Haven’t we anything more important to talk about?”

Darth Ravage rolled his eyes, a gesture oddly visible in the vast chamber. “Yes, let’s have the news. Proceed, child.”

Ashara gritted her teeth. Then she projected her voice as she never had before. “Sith. Lords of the Empire. No doubt you have heard the news. Darth Nox is dead, having been done in by a hysterical mother and a Force-blind.”

“It was that particular hysterical mother,” muttered Scythia.

Ashara pushed. “This leaves his legacy embarrassingly tarnished…and his seat on the Dark Council empty. If someone you know wants to step up into that place, you can tell them to make an appointment with me.”

Things were quiet.

“I’ve heard of you,” said Mortis. “I confirmed your master on the Dark Council myself. He spoke of you in the most…mixed…terms I ever heard from him. Virinos Geth was a good Sith, a traditional Sith, a credit to the Order. And, barring his untimely death, there was only one challenge he ever set his mind to that defeated him: breaking you.”

“Is that an argument against me, or for?”

“Hm.” He smiled. Vowrawn was artfully failing to hide a smile of his own between fingers and bone tendrils.

“I won’t apologize for what I’ve done, nor what I intend to do. But my master is dead.”

“Not at your hand,” said Ravage.

“It was I who let the Outlander go alive after the fight.” And she remembered the moment well. Back there on Darth Nox’s flagship after Ruth Niral’s incursion, after Ashara had suppressed her own screaming psyche long enough to opt out of showing up to save her master, Ruth had been wisp-thin, spattered with blood and burn marks, her short hair in tufted disarray, deep purple spiderwebs lacing her throat and temples, no doubt from Darth Nox’s trademark lightning. Her shirt was loose as if it had been recently moved to treat wounds beneath. She had been moving stiffly between two men with blasters; they didn’t lean toward her but their auras sure as hell did, twining around her in an agony of concern. She had looked so, so tired, as if the duel had cost her all but the ability to keep staggering forward. Ashara could have cut all three of them down, removing the Empire’s most powerful rival. A small gesture and, at the time, an easy one. But they had killed _him_. They had set her free. Ashara had greeted them and let them go. “Think about what it means to have someone she likes on the Council. I don’t think anyone here is likely to pry that goodwill out of her.”

“She has not forgotten me,” said Vowrawn.

Panic pierced and stayed. The uniqueness of this point was her primary argument. She pushed onward. “And she trusts you to do…what, since you settled your debts?”

Vowrawn shrugged. “Not assassinate her. I send her Life Day cards, I expect she’ll reciprocate any year now.”

Ravage groaned. “Vowrawn…”

Ashara stepped in. “What qualification do you want? What proofs? I am powerful enough to take Darth Nox’s place. If you like another applicant more I can destroy him. What else do you need to know?”

“She drove Nox up the wall,” said Mortis. “And anyone who studied Corellia can speak to her combat skills. All told, that’s good enough for me.”

“We lost Corellia,” said Ravage.

“Yes, but the Republic lost their favorite battalion and a Green Jedi enclave in the process. Ashara’s name was spoken in lofty places that month.”

“Names don’t win battles. I say nay,” grumbled Ravage.

“I say aye,” said Mortis.

“Nay,” chorused three of the holograms. Ashara tensed. If they were there in person this interview could go very, very bad.

“Aye,” drawled Vowrawn. “The Outlander’s special friends should stick together.”

The three local strangers exchanged looks. “Aye,” “aye,” “aye.”

Ashara had just run out of fingers to count on. She flexed her gloves and wondered.

“My dear,” said Scythia, “am I the deciding vote? You must come to my ship sometime. We’ll talk, as patriots do.”

Ashara hesitated. Hesitation was foolishness. Hesitation was death. But this was Darth Scythia, and every bargain she struck was just a little better for her than for her target.

Scythia smiled. It was hard to read those eyes in the holo projection, but that smile was the pointed fulcrum of Ashara’s career. It would cost her.

Pish. Reputation wasn’t action, and Ashara could handle bad deals as they came. She wouldn’t have walked in here if she didn’t know that. She stuck out her chin. “Then we’ll talk.”

Scythia clasped her hands and beamed. “Very well…Lord of the Dark Council.”

“Imperius,” said Mortis. “I always liked that more than Nox anyway.”

Ashara hurriedly rearranged her expectations, shoving six potential names out of the way. It was the Council that had made Virinos Geth Nox. Now it was they making Ashara Zavros…Imperius. She could inhabit that. She could work wonders with that.

One shaft of light in this miserable Council. It was a start.


End file.
